Massy lived in the middle of the lagoon in the pretty little town of Orbetello, his balcony looking over the cathedral. Back in 1930, when fascist Italy was advancing its aviation, the lagoon was used used as a major base for sea planes. Today its a nature reserve, shallow and full of flamingoes in the winter and weed in the summer, so I couldn’t paddled across it. Instead I had to paddle around the Monte Argentario peninsula.

This wasn’t a problem – this section of coast wasn’t to be missed. A gusty wind was blowing and clouds swirled around the majestic peaks, the cliffs the most impressive yet. I couldn’t capture the scale of this coastline.

At midday I stopped in Porto Ercole to catch up with some writing and eating, having paddled 25km, but only 5km south. I sat on a concrete bench in the shade with four elderly gents, great characters who stared at every tourist who went by, looking them up and down, and shouted out to friends whizzing by on mopeds.

I then cracked on across a big sandy bay, with no destination in mind. A small swell was rolling in and I thought the surf could be big tomorrow, with wind forecast. The beach reminded me of day 23 along the Cote Sauvage, and I didn’t want a repeat of that day – being unable to get out through the surf I had to haul my kayak 10km along the beach. So although I’d been paddling for seven hours already, I decided to carry on until the next town. These kilometers had to be paddled at some point, and it was summer solstice, so why not?

The huge chimneys of the oil burning Alessandro Volta power station never seemed to get any closer, and I was relieved when I finally passed its menacing presence. The sun set behind me and the lights of Montalto marina guided me in through the fading light to make land around 10pm.

Diabetes

If you are reading this section but don’t know what type 1 diabetes is, or what it’s like to kayak with this condition, have a read of some articles in my diabetes section like this one.

At the moment I’m experimenting with eating a low carb diet. This makes it easier for me to control my sugar levels as I inject less insulin and gives me sustained energy levels as I’m getting my fuel from fats, of which even skinny people have large stores of (compared to carbs). Aa you can see it working well- my levels were flat all day.

Some of the challenges are getting my body to adapt to burning fat, getting enough energy from fats and proteins, finding and storing these foods, and dealing with missing out on delicious pizza and pasta.

These challenges are much easier than dealing with crazy sugar levels from eating carbs, so at the moment I’m happy to deal with them. It’s always going to be hard doing this adventure with type 1. Let’s see how it goes.